The dusty and travel-worn students from the other departments finally arrived.
Before their arrival, all the students of the Warfare Department had already enjoyed a hearty meal.
At the tail end of the group, the limping Meng Bai appeared in Lin Xi's line of sight.
"Lin Xi!" As soon as the slightly thinner chubby boy spotted Lin Xi—who was waiting in line with the other new students of the Warfare Department—he almost burst into tears.
"Waaaah!"
But upon hearing that everything in this courtyard could be eaten freely, it only took a blink before Meng Bai had darted to the front of the line.
Lin Xi saw Zhang Ping and Xiang Lin in the middle of the line, their faces pale and sickly. When they spotted Lin Xi, they both nodded and greeted him.
Lin Xi's gaze then landed on Gao Yanan.
The girl who made his heart race slightly had taken off her cloak. Her face seemed thinner as well. Casually, she picked a few items to eat, and while slowly chewing, she rubbed her sore legs—evidently, the past few days hadn't been easy for her either.
"When did you arrive?"
"What did you eat these past few days?" After nearly eating their fill, friends like Meng Bai and Lin Xi began whispering.
"We got here yesterday… yellow antelope, and elk."
"You guys ate that well?"
"What, you ate worse? What did you eat?"
"We've eaten everything… wild rabbits, grass roots, snakes... even bugs!"
"Huh?" Lin Xi and a bunch of Warfare Department students immediately widened their eyes at Meng Bai, finding him unexpectedly endearing. It turned out that although Meng Bai and the other departments didn't rush as fast, they spent a lot of time learning how to survive in the wilderness along the way—and even more critically, most of them still didn't manage to fill their stomachs.
The black-robed middle-aged professor had a very simple theory:
Only in hunger could one clearly remember which things were edible and which should never be touched.
"Shouldn't this be something we in the Warfare Department are learning? Why are the students from the Department of Civil Studies, Internal Affairs, and Artificing being trained like this?" Li Kaiyun couldn't help but whisper this to Lin Xi, Meng Bai, and Zhang Ping.
Xiang Lin quietly explained:
"There was once a senior from the Civil Studies Department who got trapped in a desolate valley with a border patrol unit for half a month. Thanks to the survival skills he learned at the Academy, they made it out alive. Every department has the option to join the frontier army during trials..."
Dang… Dang… Dang…
As most of the new students were now chatting in hushed voices, a series of crisp chimes rang out.
Over twenty stern-faced, black-robed instructors stepped out calmly from a covered walkway and appeared before the students.
"Vice Dean Xia," all of the instructors bowed deeply to the one-armed old man with a weathered face.
The old man merely nodded in response.
"All of you, form two lines and follow us."
A black-robed instructor in his fifties with a gray, ashen face said coldly to the new students, then turned and led the group back down the corridor.
This instructor had a sunken, lifeless left eye—he was clearly one-eyed—and a long scar across his left cheek. His appearance and tone were so intimidating that most students immediately fell into line without protest, trailing behind Vice Dean Xia and the other faculty members.
…
All the new students, Lin Xi included, couldn't help but gaze around with curiosity.
The walkway they passed through was fully paved with white marble, and every few dozen steps, the ground displayed relief carvings of azure birds and floral patterns. The wear on the stone suggested great age.
Although the towering buildings they had seen earlier looked close, now that they were walking among them, they realized the distances were vast.
Some areas were separated by large forests, others by rocky slopes.
The courtyard they had been in earlier seemed to be merely a gatehouse within this entire mountain complex.
After leaving the corridor, the instructors led them onto a wooden walkway.
This path cut straight through a grove of trees—and even passed through a massive bell tower.
The tower was built from rectangular blocks of yellow stone, topped with a large bronze bell. Wild herbs sprouted from the cracks between the stones.
After crossing the bell tower, the walkway split into many paths. But the instructors continued straight ahead—toward a grand round hall.
Lin Xi's breath caught.
This three-tiered round hall was covered in glazed tiles: blue on top, ochre in the middle, green below. It was unmistakably styled after the Temple of Heaven's Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests!
But this structure was three to four times larger than the one in Beijing.
Twenty-eight gilded nanmu pillars held up the entire building. The professors and instructors of Azure Bird Academy lifted the hanging curtains and stepped inside.
The floor was paved with enormous blue tiles. Oil lamps shaped like bronze cranes lined the walls every few dozen steps. They were already lit, casting a bright glow onto the crossbeams, which were engraved with war scenes. On the eastern and western walls of the dome, a qilin and a mandarin duck were carved, while the central mural depicted the back of a middle-aged man standing on a broken city wall, facing a sea of corpses and armies below.
The scene was suffocating—yet awe-inspiring.
The hall's interior was empty except for twelve bronze lotus oil lamps surrounding a blood-red stone stele.
"This stele was once part of the outer wall of the Fallen Star Tomb," the cold, sharp voice of the one-eyed instructor rang out across the hall, making the hearts of all the whispering students jolt.
"Line up before the stele to receive the Dean's message."
Under this solemn command, Lin Xi found himself at the front of the stone stele.
This was Azure Bird Academy's most important tradition.
All the new students saw the strange "sigils" carved on the stele—none could understand them. Only the three characters "Dean Zhang" stirred instinctive reverence and excitement.
But the moment Lin Xi saw those "sigils," he was overwhelmed with emotion—unsure whether he should laugh to the heavens or burst into tears.
Because to him, those were nothing but simple, simplified Chinese characters.
"Old friend, you finally made it. Not easy, huh... Even a TV would be hard to explain. Truly helpless…"
This string of characters, incomprehensible to the others, carried the scent of an entire world.
In that moment, he realized:
The middle-aged man in the legend was a traveler from the same place as him.
He hadn't been dreaming. His memories were real. In this world, he was no longer alone.
It was a sense of kinship he couldn't suppress.
He knew the man must have felt the same. Otherwise, why leave such a message as the first line?
Lin Xi trembled as he read on, oblivious to everyone else.
"I came from Chongqing. Before arriving in this world, I was a high school physics teacher. Where are you from, and what did you do?"
"I'm from Wuxi, a student…" Lin Xi replied silently in his heart.
"If you're reading this, I'm probably no longer at Qingluan Academy. Well, that's kind of obvious… But since you can read this, I hope you won't mind me rambling a bit. As a fellow hometown native, you likely know less about this world than I do. Unless you're a PhD in astrophysics, I suggest you don't bother trying to figure out what kind of place this is. I've been at it for years and still don't understand. The sun, moon, and stars are just like Earth's… but no dynasty like this ever existed on Earth. Parallel universe? Higher dimensions? Don't waste time.
My view is: since we're here, we might as well live well and live boldly."
"Uncle, I think the same as you…" Lin Xi whispered silently, as if conversing face-to-face with the man.
"By now you've probably noticed people here have incredible combat abilities. They call it 'soul power.' I think of it as psychic force, or something akin to special abilities or internal energy from meditation… Whatever works for you. The strong here are really strong. Bullets are almost useless against them. Don't think building a musket regiment will let you conquer the world… I've tried gunpowder. This world doesn't have many of the necessary materials. So just focus on cultivating soul power…"
"Right, back to the point. Here's the key question: do you have a spinning wheel in your mind?"
Lin Xi took a deep breath. The question was abrupt, but it made him feel like crying.
In a corner of his mind, he did sense a green glow… like a spinning wheel of light.
"Okay, if not, don't be disappointed. If you don't have it, and this makes no sense to you, then forget it… But if you do, have you noticed it can be used once per day, and lets you return to ten minutes earlier? I've studied this quite a bit. I can't explain what force enables this 'ability,' but I do have a theory about how it formed. Maybe our souls took over our bodies here, and the soul power of these bodies combined with the energy that brought us over… created this wheel. Physically speaking, it might just be a form of energy. And let me tell you seriously… this wheel can be moved, bit by bit…"